


how to become a parent: a (questionable) tutorial

by exactlyemma



Series: happy(ish) paulkins [3]
Category: Hatchetfield Universe - Team StarKid
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Apotheosis, Alternate Universe - No Wiggly (Black Friday), Established Relationship, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:14:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28042242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exactlyemma/pseuds/exactlyemma
Summary: Emma had never been a ‘kids’ kind of person. She’d always said she didn’t want kids, and she’d always been patted on the shoulder in a grossly dehumanizing way and told that someday she’d change her mind. She’d never thought that… she would actually reconsider?my take on trying to make paulkins kids plausible because i'm soft for them and they're my comfort parental characters, so.
Relationships: Paul Matthews/Emma Perkins
Series: happy(ish) paulkins [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2040001
Comments: 8
Kudos: 30





	how to become a parent: a (questionable) tutorial

**Author's Note:**

> yes, another part of the series i said was over, i know. but this occurred to me and i couldn't let it go so here we are. it's another emma pov because she's easier for me to write? i dunno, i considered alternating between them but in my head it was already emma so i decided to go with it. rated mature for emma's dirty mind, no smut.
> 
> this one is less angstier than the previous part, heads up :)

Emma had never been a ‘kids’ kind of person. She was overall _okay_ with babies, and could not tolerate very many ‘ _why’s_?’ in regards to five year olds. She’d always said she didn’t want kids, and she’d always been patted on the shoulder in a grossly dehumanizing way and told that someday she’d change her mind. She’d never thought that… she would ever actually reconsider?

It wasn’t a fast decision, by any means. It was just… maybe there was a chance that Emma hated less the thought of being a parent and more the thought of being the type of parent that _her_ parents had been. 

“Hey Paul?”

Her feet were in his lap while he read. It was one of the first nights she’d spent at his house. He was reading on the couch; she hadn’t known it at the time, but it was one of his habits.

He looked up, tilted his glasses. “Yeah?"

“Do you want kids?”

He recoiled. “Uh… not… exactly. You?”

Emma grinned and took another sip of her beer. “Thank shit. No. I don’t think I could date a guy who’s dreaming about our kids, ‘cause that’s not gonna happen.”

That had been nearly four years ago. _That_ Emma had also been opposed to marriage, and so had that Paul. And now there she was. Happily married. And it didn’t make her want to throw up just thinking about it. Paul seemed to have a thing for making her change her mind. Staying in Hatchetfield. Marriage. Kids… maybe.

She also kind of… didn’t hate the idea of Paul as a father. He was hilariously bad with kids, and Emma was curious to see what sort of dynamic he’d develop with a kid that was _his_.

Of course, who was to say whether or not she’d raise a kid any better than her parents had? Hell, she was pretty messed up, did she really want to risk doing that to another human being? What if what happened to Jane happened to her? Emma didn’t think she could do what Tom had to do. She didn’t have any old high-school lover to reunite with, and besides, everyone knew that out of the two of them she was much more likely than Paul to die doing something mundane.

Emma had seen the look in Tom’s eyes at the funeral. She didn’t want to do that to Paul. She didn’t want to do that to Tim. He was a pretty cool kid. He was the first kid she met that made her decide maybe they weren’t so bad. He was Jane’s child, after all, so Emma was bound to like him.

It was a strange feeling, reconsidering. Emma felt like she’d been recalculating most of her ideals from the moment she called Paul her boyfriend. A word she’d often made fun of. _Was Becky’s_ boyfriend _gonna bring her_ flowers? It was just so easy to tease. 

Butterflies weren’t a thing Emma valued, in her stomach or out. Paul was frankly terrifying, for such an adorably anxious man. Emma was pretty sure now that that was what it was about him that scared her. Attractive people always had an ulterior motive when they showed interest in her, that was just how it went. Usually it was sex. Usually she was okay with that.

But Paul had been different. The butterflies didn’t go away, and it seemed that he felt them, too. Perhaps that was why he’d been so anxious to order a goddamn black coffee every single day.

“Good morning, Em.” Paul was smiling. She’d woken up smashed into his side. He was sitting up in bed, glasses on his face haphazardly, book in his lap. “Is today a good day, or a bad day?”

She blinked up at his blue eyes. They’d been the first thing she saw when she woke up that morning. That was what had gotten her first. Those eyes. It occurred to her again. That little intrusive thought that had been pushing at the back of her mind. “You ever wonder what color eyes our kids would have?”

He blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Y’know. Punnett squares and shit. You’ve got the little b, little b, I’ve got either big b, big b, or big b, little b.” Emma sat up, horrified by the blank look on Paul’s face. “This is basic genetics Paul, really?”

“You’re the one who has a degree in botany,” Paul grumbled, face turning pink. “You’re the science one.”

Emma smirked, squishing herself into his side. “The science one, huh? Is that all I am to you, just a label?”

“Yup.” Paul grinned. “My wife.”

Emma rolled her eyes, a smile spreading across her face. “Maybe I shouldn’t have proposed, you wouldn’t get the privilege of calling me your wife.”

Paul hummed thoughtfully. “But then you wouldn’t get the privilege of calling all this,” Paul gestured at himself, “your husband.”

Emma pulled an unamused face, biting the inside of her cheek to hold back laughter. “Don’t oversell yourself, Matthews.”

“Matthews-Perkins,” he corrected, his smile turning dopey. “And I’m hot, and you know it.”

“I guess you’re right,” she admitted. “It’s not like I’d agree to marry someone unattractive.”

Paul smirked. “Uh-huh. You like what I got.”

Paul knew exactly how much Emma liked what he had to offer. She smiled, both her arms wrapped around his chest. “A little.” It occurred to her that Paul had expertly changed the subject. “Hey. You didn’t answer my question.”

He frowned.

“Ugh, you remember.” Emma tickled the bottom of his chin, something that only felt appropriate to do in the safety of their bed. “Ever wonder about what color eyes our kids would have?’

“Ah.” Paul mulled over it. “Well, statistically brown, yeah? There’s either like… a 25% chance of our kids having blue eyes or none at all. What color are your parents eyes?”

“So you do remember!” Emma punched his side, triumphant. “You little liar. And they both had brown eyes, but Jane’s were blue, so it should be possible. That or Jane’s adopted and they never told us…” Emma trailed off as she considered it. It actually would have been a lot like her parents to forget to mention something like that.

“Still. Probably brown.” Paul shrugged.

Emma stared at his eyes. So big and blue. “Damn shame. Our kid would _kill it_ with those eyes.”

“What, ‘cause I was such a lady killer?” Paul asked, grinning.

“Just think dude, my personality, your eyes, _bam_.” Emma clapped to emphasize. “We’d have to lock their windows to keep the potential lovers out.”

Paul rolled his eyes. “I don’t know if our windows even have locks.”

“Well, we’d have to get some.”

“Yeah? You wanna add window locks to the cost of our mortgage?”

Emma pretended to reconsider. “Hmm, you’re right, that’d be at least a hundred grand. The basement, then. The basement could be their bedroom.”

Paul smiled. “The ideal solution.”

“M-hmm.” Emma turned her head in towards his arm and sucked in the scent of his shirt, absorbing the comfort it brought.

“Speaking of avoiding questions.” Paul poked her nose. “Good day, or bad day?”

Emma smiled, and flicked away his hand. “Good day.”

That had been the first day she’d ever spoken to him about it. The little trickle in the back of her mind. The one that wanted to tell him to put the condom down every time. To leave it up to fate. But she didn’t. They should really talk more before they went and did something rash, she thought. Horny Emma probably shouldn’t be making life impacting decisions, after all. She was biased.

‘Talking it out’ was not Emma’s strong suit.

So she hinted some more.

“You really don’t think our kids would have blue eyes?”

Paul bit into his pizza, a knowing smile on his face. “You’re really stuck on this, aren’t you?”

“I’m curious as to your thoughts on the matter,” she deflected.

“Hmm.” Paul took another bite of pizza. “And I thought I already gave you my thoughts on the matter.”

Emma served herself a slice of pizza. “Did you? I don’t recall.”

“Brown, probably, as badly as you want our kid to have blue eyes.”

Something in Emma twitched when he said _our kid_. She wondered if the same thing happened to him when he said it. She bit her lip.

“You wanna find out?”

Paul put down his pizza. “Do we need to talk about something?”

Emma nodded.

A decision was fairly easy to come to, actually. Kids sounded nice. Maybe they’d paid a large down payment on a multiple-bedroom house for a reason.

Emma came to another decision, a little afterwards. She really didn’t want to push a whole human out of her. She didn't want to be pregnant. Paul was understanding and supportive, just like she knew he’d be. Those realizations did, however, leave them a little stumped.

Then Emma had an idea.

“You ever thought about adoption?”

Paul shut his book, already giving up on returning to it. “You’ve really got to stop waking up like this.”

Emma shrugged, wiping the sleep out of her eyes. “I think asleep me is smarter than awake me. She had a dream that we adopted a kid, and I woke up, and like, _duh_ , it’s obvious.”

Paul smiled, taking one of Emma’s hands in his own. “That would be a convenient solution to our little dilemma. That’s a big commitment, though, Em, are you sure?”

“What, like making a human isn’t a big commitment?”

“This might take more than a year, is the main difference, I guess,” Paul said. “That and you wouldn’t have to push it out of you. And paperwork. Lots of paperwork.”

“We can handle paper. And we’d get a kid out of it anyway! This is ideal.”

Paul put his book down on the table. “I guess we’ve got some work to do.”

Emma sat up, possibly the fastest and most excited she had since Paul joked that he’d brought home a surprise animal last night and she missed the _joking_ part. She’d been very upset to find no lizard in a sombrero named after Ted downstairs. Hungover Paul could be a real bitch. She smiled. 

“We do have work to do.”

As it would turn out, it didn’t take a year. Sure, it took eleven months, but _not_ a year. Emma was planning on holding that against Paul for the rest of her days. Eleven stress-filled and anxious months. They filled out paperwork, so much paperwork. They filled in paperwork from their medical history to information on their house. There was paperwork for pets, if they already had kids, there was enough papers to cover their dining room table. They met up with agents, discussed what they “wanted” in their child, which felt strange. People had _wants_ for the child they adopted. Emma wanted a kid, what they looked like didn’t matter, she would learn if she had to.

The landline was something neither Paul nor Emma used on a daily basis. When it rang, more often than not, the call went ignored. Once they were finally labelled as an ‘ _active family_ ’ this was not the case. Every time it rang they froze in their tracks, both of them racing to answer the phone.

Paul was the one to answer it when the time finally came. After three months of _potentials_ and _no_ ’s, they had a yes. They had a kid.

Emma felt like she was floating when Paul nodded at her, tears filling his eyes. Someone said yes. They were going to have a baby. She was going to be a mother.

That was both a liberating and a fucking terrifying statement. Emma’s main goal was to not fuck this kid up like her mom had done to her. That was honestly setting the bar pretty low, so maybe she actually wanted to be a good mom. Whatever that meant, exactly. “Good parent” was such a loose term. It involved things like feeding regularly, not hitting, being overall loving. But wasn’t that just being decent?

Either way, Emma supposed she could manage that. Even if she forgot it for herself, this kid was going to eat lunch goddamnit.

They had a nursery pretty ready to go. Sure, the kid couldn’t come home right away, but being on their toes was a necessity. Putting the crib together was a good team experiment. Emma thought they worked pretty well together. She fucked around with the tools and Paul corrected, his head in the directions the whole time to stop Emma from screwing the poles on the wrong way.

They went with a green theme. Emma said it was a gender neutral color, Paul said it was his favorite because it was the color of her Beanie’s apron.

“I married a geek,” Emma said, grinning anyway.

Paul put down the can of paint. “It took you this long to notice?”

She rolled her eyes, opting to get down to business instead of responding. They were halfway through painting the room/a paint fight when the distant sound of the landline ringing from downstairs floated through the door.

Paul and Emma’s eyes met, both sets wide.

“Shit.”

And they were both on their feet, scrambling down the stairs to answer the phone, undoubtedly tracking paint on the floor and not bothered enough to care. Emma got to it first that time. The words that came out of their social workers mouth were words Emma hoped she remembered forever.

_“Do you want to meet your daughter?”_

Daughter.

She had a daughter.

Emma Perkins(-Matthews) was a mother.

Suck on that, Hatchetfield.

Paul kept on repeating the word on the way to the hospital. 

“We have a daughter, Em,” he whispered, already in awe. He squeezed his hand on her knee. “Daughter. She’s a girl. A real living, breathing, girl.”

“For now,” Emma said, the first words spoken since she’d told Paul that they could go meet her. “We’re gonna be supportive if she’s trans, right?”

“Right,” Paul agreed. “I… God, that hadn’t occurred to me. But yeah, we’ll be supportive. That would be a dick move, to not be supportive.”

Emma smiled softly. She really had married a geek. “Paul, we could have grandkids.”

Paul’s mouth turned into an open ‘O’. “ _Shit_.”

She loved it when he cursed. He rarely did it. He said it made him feel anxious inside, Emma claimed that was bullshit, but still got excited when it happened. “We might not, of course,” she continued. “She might not want kids, and we’d respect that.”

“But we _might_ ,” Paul repeated, his eyes looking like they were going to bug out of his head. “I don’t think I’ve felt like this since the first time I actually talked to you that first time at Beanies.”

Emma tore her eyes away from the blurring roads and to her husband. “How’s that?”

“Terrified, but also excited. Just think, Emma, we’re going to remember this moment for the rest of our lives.”

“And we’re going to do it covered in green paint,” Emma said with a laugh. There was some smudged on Paul’s forehead, and it was on both of their clothes, which were a bit ragged. They’d worn old clothes that they no longer cared for intentionally for painting, now it seemed a poor choice.

“That’ll just add to the dramatics of the story.”

Emma loved that about Paul. He just shrugged off something that someone else might make a big deal out of. And he was right. It would make for a better story in six years for bedtime. “I love you.”

His eyes softened. “I love you too, Em. Always.”

Paul couldn’t park fast enough. The clerk behind the desk searching their names up in the hospital’s system couldn’t type fast enough. Emma might have been shaking from all the anticipation, or maybe it was just everything else. She tapped her fingers on her sides, the fingers that in just moments could be holding her daughter.

Eventually, _finally_ , a smiling nurse led them down a few hallways and through a few doors. Emma would have thought that she was floating a few inches off the ground if everything weren’t still so much taller than she was. Then they walked down another hallway and through another door. And there was a cradle. And there was a baby in it. A living, breathing baby. _Their_ baby.

Emma walked to the cradle, numb in the hand that was holding onto Paul. They walked right up to the crib, staring wide eyed at the baby that was sleeping peacefully inside. Then the nurse said they could hold her. Paul nodded at Emma, smiling. 

Emma picked her up. She was so little. So small. So fragile. She exhaled heavily as Emma adjusted to the weight, and Emma thought she might cry.

“Holy _shit_.”

Paul put an arm on Emma’s shoulder. “This is pretty cool,” he whispered.

“The coolest,” was all she could say, her gaze fixed on the baby. Her daughter. Minutes or hours could have passed, when Emma realized Paul probably wanted a turn. “You want to hold her?”

Paul sucked in a breath. “Yeah. I do want to hold her. My daughter.”

Emma chuckled as she passed the baby over. “Our daughter.”

A smile spread across Paul’s face as the baby settled into his arms. “ _Ours_. Even better.”

The baby yawned, her little mouth stretching, tiny eyes opening and landing on Paul. She blinked. The blue eyes underneath were revealed.

“She has your eyes,” Emma whispered, softly staring at the tiny thing in front of her.

Paul smiled down at them. “What are the odds of that?”

Emma smiled wider, if possible. “This is the best.”

Paul tore his eyes off the baby and smiled at Emma. “ _She’s_ the best.”

Emma was still complaining about the comment when they were driving home hours later.

“You haven’t even known that little shit for a day and she’s already unseated me? What kind of gig are you running here, showing _favoritism_?”

“For the final time, I love both of you equally,” Paul said, chuckling. “I just love her a little more.”

Emma sighed. “Guess I can’t blame you. She _is_ the best.”

Going home to paint the rest of the nursery felt like a strangely normal thing to be doing. They were choosing to go and paint some walls instead of meeting their daughter?

But that wasn’t how it worked. The process was closer to being over, she was almost in their fingertips, but time had to pass. And so they went home to paint some walls.

There was one paint stain on the stairs that Paul couldn’t get out, no matter how many times he scrubbed at it. Emma joked that it would just add to the dramatics of the story, and he glared and said that wasn’t what he’d meant.

Emma thought it was pretty funny.

The arrival of their daughter meant a final spree of last minute baby things. Clothes. Bottles. Learning how to work baby-gates. How to attach and detach the carseat, little shit that it was. Diapers. Lots and lots of diapers. Almost more diapers than there was paperwork. 

And there was _a lot_ of paperwork.

But, after many shopping trips and pens that had run out of ink, the time passed. She could finally come home.

They usually played music in the car. Emma wasn’t big on silence. There was too much room for all her thoughts floating around, and it made her uneasy. But today, when all that she could think about was her daughter, she didn’t mind the thoughts so much. She kept turning her head to look at the seat or glancing at it in the mirror. It grounded her, reminded her that this wasn’t some fantasy, this was really happening.

Her daughter was coming home.

“And this is the spot that daddy left when we ran down the stairs to find out we got to have you,” Emma said, walking over the green spot on the stairs, baby carrier in hand.

“Hey, how do you know it wasn’t you?” Paul complained, a step behind.

“Butt out, we’re having mother daughter bonding time.” Emma turned her attention back to the baby. “Daddy’s very silly, he thinks that I spilled paint. You will soon learn, baby, I don’t _spill_.”

The baby was very much asleep, swaddled and strapped into her carrier. Emma and Paul had carried a conversation with her the whole ride home anyway.

Unstrapping her and placing her into her crib for the night nearly made Emma cry. Paul did cry. Hard. Emma held back mostly because she couldn’t make fun of him for crying if she was doing it herself. She wanted to. The few tears that got out were quickly wiped away, before Paul could see them. Even if he did, which he probably did, he chose not to say anything. Emma appreciated that.

Sleep was hard that night. Both of them felt the urge to not leave her side. They were only a room away, but it was a room too far. They had the other, though, and they rested more entangled than usual. Still, Emma was usually the first to fall asleep, and she found herself staring at the ceiling, mind abuzz.

“Hey, Paul?”

He opened his eyes. “Yeah?”

“Today was a good fucking day. Today was the best day.”

Paul hummed an agreement. “Just think how much better tomorrow will be.”

And suddenly, like a little kid on Christmas Eve that was reminded that Santa Claus wouldn’t come if they were awake, Emma was very eager to shut her eyes and go to sleep.

The days that followed were bound to be wonderful. She’d only find out by being there.

**Author's Note:**

> i apologize for any adoption inconsistencies! i know little about the adoption process and while i did do research for this fic i don't know how well i understood and communicated that and if the information i read was completely correct. 
> 
> i also didn't name their kid. i might later if i write more for this, but i don't like naming characters in a pre-existing canon that isn't mine, idk. i am absolutely not trying to shame people who do name the kids, it's purely a me thing. i always feel nervous i'm going to choose the 'wrong' name, we'll see where it goes.
> 
> obligatory apologies aside: i truly believe that they would have the BEST banter and will not be convinced otherwise


End file.
